GUILTY NXIVM - Inside a Secretive Group Where Women are Branded

ALBANY — Last March, five women gathered in a home near here to enter a secret sisterhood they were told was created to empower women.

To gain admission, they were required to give their recruiter — or “master,” as she was called — naked photographs or other compromising material and were warned that such “collateral” might be publicly released if the group’s existence were disclosed.

The women, in their 30s and 40s, belonged to a self-help organization called Nxivm, which is based in Albany and has chapters across the country, Canada and Mexico.

Sarah Edmondson, one of the participants, said she had been told she would get a small tattoo as part of the initiation. But she was not prepared for what came next.

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[...] Since the late 1990s, an estimated 16,000 people have enrolled in courses offered by Nxivm (pronounced Nex-e-um), which it says are designed to bring about greater self-fulfilment by eliminating psychological and emotional barriers. Most participants take some workshops, like the group’s “Executive Success Programs,” and resume their lives. But other people have become drawn more deeply into Nxivm, giving up careers, friends and families to become followers of its leader, Keith Raniere, who is known within the group as “Vanguard.”

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In July, Edmondson filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Health against Danielle Roberts, a licensed osteopath and follower of Raniere, who performed the branding, according to Edmondson and another woman. In a letter, the agency said it would not look into Roberts because she was not acting as Edmondson’s doctor when the branding is said to have happened.

Separately, a state police investigator told Edmondson and two other women that officials would not pursue their criminal complaint against Nxivm because their actions had been consensual, a text message shows.

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wfgodot said:

And from Albany Times Union, February 11, 2012:

Secrets of NXIVM
Some experts say Keith Raniere, the guru behind
an unusual training business, is really a cult leader

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wfgodot said:

And from Albany Times Union, February 11, 2012:

Secrets of NXIVM
Some experts say Keith Raniere, the guru behind
an unusual training business, is really a cult leader

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Vail said:

As far as being a cult, they had me at "Raniere has convinced some followers he doesn't drive because his intellectual energy sets off radar detectors..” but I realize there are people out there that need an expert to state the obvious.

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perfectingpink said:

How to find the “K-R” and ‘A-M’ in the DOS slave brand

http://niagarafallsreporter.com/find-k-r-m-dos-slave-brand/

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Keith Raniere, the co-founder of the NXIVM corporation, a secretive Colonie-based organization that an expert has called an "extreme cult," was arrested in Mexico this week by the FBI based on a federal criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York.

The complaint, filed recently in connection with an ongoing federal grand jury investigation being headed by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, charges Raniere with multiple counts of sex trafficking and forced labor.

(. . .)

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